Please note that I will only be talking about the global mean (average) surface temperature, not weather events that may or may not be related to such temperatures. So, all data relating to weather events is not relevant.

For decades, people have been told that CO2 controls the climate. It doesn’t. Instead, gravity does.

Greenhouse gases can absorb and radiate energy at temperatures in the lower layer of the atmosphere called the troposphere, whereas oxygen, nitrogen, and argon cannot. There is a law in physics called the Stefan-Boltzmann Law that tells us the maximum amount of radiation that can be emitted by an object (or surface) at any given temperature and, in reverse, the maximum temperature that a certain flux of radiation from a warmer source can produce in a target. Based on this law, the maximum global mean surface temperature that solar radiation reaching the surface can achieve is less than minus forty degrees Celsius.

Thus, there is far more radiation coming out of the Earth’s surface than that from the Sun. This presents a dilemma that climatologists, who are rarely qualified in physics, cannot solve. They have guessed that extra radiation from greenhouse gases must be supplying the missing energy. Thus, because they could not actually get anywhere near enough in measurements of such radiation, they merely calculated how much of this so-called back radiation was necessary.

Image by ImageFX AI.

The problem is that they had to assume that molecules of greenhouse gases somehow “know” that they must radiate more downwards than upwards. Furthermore, to explain observed surface temperatures, they needed about twice as much radiation from greenhouse gases as that delivered by the Sun. These gases, on average, comprise only about 0.3% of the atmosphere, water vapour being 0.25%, carbon dioxide about 0.04%, and methane and others are negligible.

Obviously, this is wrong, and hundreds of scientists (mostly physicists) have seen that it is wrong. The problem has been that they had no other explanation until, in 2013, I published a paper, Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures, in which I explained my discovery of the non-radiative downward “heat creep” process that can only occur in a force field such as gravity. This process provides the missing energy on Earth and virtually all the required energy needed to explain the warming on the sunlit side of other planets, such as Venus.

Variations in the global mean surface temperature (I won’t use the term “climate change”) are most likely caused by variations in the intensity of cosmic rays coming from interstellar Space and assisting the formation of clouds. This intensity varies with sunspot activity as the latter expands the heliosphere, which then reduces cosmic ray intensity. The magnetic fields of planets also alter the paths of cosmic rays and thus lead to superimposed natural cycles, the most notable being about 60 years. This is most likely due to the so-called “Great Conjunction” when Jupiter and Saturn align with the Sun about every 60 years, the last being in December 2020.

Sunspot activity appears to follow a natural cycle of about 1,000 years, with it being at a minimum during the “Maunder Minimum” between 1645 and 1715. The Little Ice Age spanned this period. The implication is that, at least by the next century if not sooner, global cooling will commence for about 500 years. In the shorter term, we can explain the fact that there has been little change in temperatures from 1998 until 2021, when the 60-year cycle appears to be now starting to rise again after the Great Conjunction at the end of 2020.

My 2013 paper and my subsequent book, Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All, contain the only correct explanation for observed temperatures on Earth, Venus, and indeed throughout the Solar System. The “heat creep” process explains, for example, why the base of the troposphere of Uranus is hotter than Earth’s. And so, as about 1,600 scientists have signaled, there is no climate emergency. Furthermore, humans cannot expect to control the global mean surface temperature, as it has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, the vital gas needed for all vegetation and, indeed, for life.